Abstract
The p53 gene is frequently mutated in cancers and it is vital for cell cycle control, homeostasis and carcinogenesis. We describe a novel p53 mutational spectrum, different to those generally observed in human and murine tumors. Our study shows a high prevalence of nonsense mutations in the p53 N terminus of 2-acetylaminofluorene (2-AAF)-induced urinary bladder tumors. These nonsense mutations forced downstream translation initiation at codon 41 of Trp53, resulting in the aberrant expression of the p53 isoform ΔN-p53 (or p44). We propose a novel mechanism for the origination and the selection for this isoform. We show that chemical exposure can act as a novel cause of selection for this truncated protein. In addition, our data suggest that the occurrence of ΔN-p53 accounts, at least in mice, for a cancer phenotype. We also show that gene expression profiles of embryonic stem (ES) cells carrying the ΔN-p53 isoform in a p53-null background are divergent from p53 knockout ES cells, and therefore postulate that ΔN-p53 itself has functional transcriptional properties.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Animal Facilities of the Netherlands Vaccine Institute (NVI) for their skillful (bio)technical support. The work presented here was in part financially supported by NIH/NIEHS (Comparative Mouse Genomics Centers Consortium) Grant 1UO1 ES11044.
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Melis, J., Hoogervorst, E., van Oostrom, C. et al. Genotoxic exposure: novel cause of selection for a functional ΔN-p53 isoform. Oncogene 30, 1764–1772 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/onc.2010.552
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/onc.2010.552
